Prior art optical imaging sensors, which are based on either CCD or CMOS focal-plane array sensors, perform well in many imaging applications, but have certain drawbacks for applications that require high sensitivity to motion and high-speed extraction of certain image features such as object edges
There is a need for a novel advanced imaging sensor concept that samples all of the information in the radiation field, taking inspiration from biological systems. The sensor system should use most if not all of the information in the light field, including spectral, temporal, polarization, and intensity for detailed object shape, for applications enabling autonomous behavior, including egomotion determination, to aid in navigation; as well as target detection, recognition, ranging, and tracking. The integrated system design should include information processing at a fundamentally integrated level with the optics and transduction. The system should also conform to shapes with smooth contours such as airframes, and have a wide field of view (FOV≧π steradians) to allow acquiring wide FOV motion patterns using the idea of elementary motion detectors as hypothesized in neural superposition eyes (e.g., in insects and crustaceans). The system should perform spectral (mid-wave infrared (MWIR) from 3 to 5 μm and long-wave infrared (LWIR) from 8 to 12 μm), temporal, and direction sensing relative to the celestial polarization pattern. This capability would enable egomotion determination involving local motion detection, which enables global motion detection (optic flow), as well as target detection and camouflage-breaking involving target-background discrimination via motion detection for moving targets as well as spectral, shape, and polarization discrimination.
Both CCD and CMOS focal-plane array sensors are commonly used and perform well in many imaging applications, but they have certain drawbacks for applications that require high sensitivity to motion and high-speed extraction of certain image features such as object edges. The biologically inspired, or biomimetic, engineering approach was embraced to take advantage of proven biological “designs” found in the animal kingdom and to then adapt salient aspects of these into more capable designs. An example is the artificial apposition compound eye that uses one pixel per microlens on the two dimensional (2D) flat structure. An improvement of the performance of artificial apposition compound eyes is bionically inspired by the eye of the house fly. The artificial neural superposition compound eye uses a set of 3×3 pixels in the footprint of each microlens. Color imaging and an increase of the signal-to-noise ratio have been demonstrated using a redundant sampling between these pixels. However, the main disadvantage of the apposition principle, the low image resolution, remains. Furthermore, neither polarization nor spectral detection is involved.